Great Society

The Great Society was a series of domestic reforms launched by President Lyndon B. Johnson and the US Democratic Party from 1964 to 1965. Johnson implemented major spending programs that addressed education, healthcare, urban problems, rural poverty, and transportation, and he passed several major reforms. With the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, he gave more rights to African-Americans in the American South; he passed the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 to fight against poverty; he passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to allocate $1,000,000,000 of funding to schools with low-income children; his Social Security Amendments of 1965 created Medicare and Medicaid to assist people with disabilities, the elderly, and low-income families; he created the Department of Transporation to modernize America's transportation infrastructure; he required stores to place warning labels on cigarettes (Johnson himself used to smoke 60 cigarettes a day until he nearly died in 1955); he made increases to the federal minimum wage; he passed several laws to protect the environment; and, finally, he abolished immigration quotas. The "Great Society" reforms were as widespread as Franklin D. Roosevelt's "New Deal" reforms, and they changed American society for the better as people had better opportunities.